Providing Wildflowers for Pollinators

Bees, butterflies, and other pollinators need access to abundant nectar and pollen resources throughout the growing season. At minimum, strive for three species to be blooming at any one time; the greater the diversity, the better. The links below will help you find the best plants for your garden. It is important to include flowers that bloom early in the spring to provide food for newly emerging bumble bee queens. Similarly, it is important to provide flowers that bloom in the late summer and fall to support new bumble bee queens for overwintering.

If you are adding plants to your garden, plant flowers in clumps of at least 3 feet across to help them be more attractive to passing pollinators. Choose native plants wherever possible as they have evolved with native pollinators and the local environment. To attract butterflies, include their host plant in your pollinator garden.

Xerces’ most recent book, Attracting Native Pollinators: Protecting North America’s Bees and Butterflies, is available to purchase from our website. The book is published in 2011 by Storey Publishing, North Adams, Massachusetts. Attracting Native Pollinators is coauthored by four Xerces Society staff members Eric Mader, Matthew Shepherd, Mace Vaughan, and Scott Black in collaboration with Gretchen LeBuhn, San Francisco State University. Read more.

Xerces Society scientists worked with Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center botanists to develop searchable plant lists of species that are attractive to native bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and other beneficial insects, as well as lists of plants with value as nesting materials for native bees.
Click here for the plant lists.